Everybody has their favorite right-wing villian. Some prefer the Christian fundamentalist types like Pat Robertson or James Dobsons; others zero in on particularly nefarious legislators, like Tom Delay, Mitch McConnell, and their ilk. Others like to demonize the electoral operatives, people like Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, etc. etc.
Me? I've always had a warm spot for Grover Norquist. I really hate Grover Norquist. Probably because I've known so many smug priveleged white guys like him who honestly believe every single advantage they've ever had was due to their "hard work."
Norquist is just so smug, so evil, and such a liar. He knows his only real goal is more power for him and the richest of the rich, but he lies and implies he honestly believes that destroying and undermining government will eventually benefit everybody.
He evn published an article, entitled "The Democrat Party is Toast" in an insane moment of self-congratulation right before the 2004 election.
When I read that article, I couldn't believe it. The same party that survived such minor historical conflagrations as the Civil War, Reconstruction, Segregation, the Dixicrat split, and the Vietnam War (which, recall, a Democratic president, LBJ, was widely viewed as "starting") was going to be "toast" because of Karl "the Architect" Rove's sleight-of-hand electoral "success"? Seriously?
And the fact that he used the phrase "Democrat Party" got on my nerves even more. In light of this news from Pew Research, I say we all email Grover and remind him of his brilliant prediction.
A snippet is below--note that this douche uses the word "fussbucket."
The modern Democratic Party cannot survive the reelection of President George W. Bush and another four years of Republican control of both Congress and the White House.
No brag. Just fact.
The modern Democratic Party is the party of government. Its growth is the health of the state--and vice versa. Over time, all the party's building blocks are dependent on continuous support and reinforcement by the power of the central government. Trial lawyer money is now a major part of the Democratic Party, but it is wholly dependent on legislators and courts maintaining the present tort laws that allow lawyers to interject themselves into any and all contracts and relationships.
They siphon off some $240 billion a year--$40 billion of which stays with a few thousand lawyers. Labor unions, once the godfather of the Democratic Party but now displaced by the richer and more photogenic trial lawyers, cannot maintain their $8 billion in compulsory union dues without the laws that make such payments mandatory. Both wings of the dependency movement--those locked into welfare dependency and the bureaucrats who get paid well to manage others' dependency (and make sure none of them get jobs and become Republicans) are wholly dependent on legislators halting further welfare reform. Big city political machines thrive on federal grants and state-granted powers. And the coercive utopians--the radical environmentalists, animal-rights activists, feminists, and others who would use state power to force on us tiny non-flushable toilets and cars too small to hold families, take away the circus and our pet cats, and otherwise impose more fussbudget impositions on our lives than Leviticus--all depend on government grants to use and misuse federal and state power.